Getting Straight to the Point : Volleyball: Scott Ayakatubby uses acupuncture as part of his training regimen.

If you don’t think beach volleyball is a tough sport, you should see veteran pro Scott Ayakatubby during one of his acupuncture sessions.

“I’ve got needles sticking out of my ears, my hands, my back, my feet, and my butt,” Ayakatubby said. “But I’m hooked on it. It helps get the new blood in and the old blood out.”

For the last couple of years Ayakatubby, 25, of Hermosa Beach, has been using acupuncture as part of his training regimen.

You could say Ayakatubby’s seven-year career is literally suspended on pins and needles.

Two years ago, Ayakatubby had half a season wiped out because of a herniated disk between the last two vertebrae in his lower back.

The disk brushed against Ayakatubby’s sciatic nerve, sending intense pain along his right side from his back to his heel. The injury is similar to the one suffered a year ago by baseball slugger Dave Winfield and hockey star Mario Lemieux.

“Most of the time it’s just stiff, but when it hurts it’s a sharp pain,” Ayakatubby said. “Sometimes I’ve got to watch how I get out of bed in the morning.”

Ayakatubby first hurt the back after a tournament in Hawaii in 1988. He was out for the rest of that season and part of the next, frustrating the plans he and longtime partner Brent Frohoff had for a surge into the game’s highest circle.

Right now, Ayakatubby is doing whatever he can to make sure it doesn’t happen again.

Barring surgery, that has meant frequent visits to the chiropractor and masseuse and the acupuncturist, on recommendation from Ayakatubby’s grandmother.

“I’m as scared of needles as anyone else, but I figured if my grandmother could handle it, I could too,” he said.

This season, Ayakatubby appears to be all the way back. This weekend in Cape Cod, Mass., he’s playing with his fourth partner of the year--first Frohoff, then veterans John Hanley, Jon Stevenson and Tim Hovland.

At the Cape Cod Open, Ayakatubby is teamed with Hovland, the fifth-ranked player on the tour. Hovland’s regular partner, Mike Dodd, missed the event with the flu. Ayakatubby and Hovland are the fourth-seeded team in the tournament.

Seven years ago, Ayakatubby and Frohoff broke onto the tour. They were best buddies from Hermosa Beach.

Ayakatubby was only a year removed from Mira Costa High--he was Mustang Coach Mike Cook’s most valuable player--when he and Frohoff turned pro.

They both had American Indian blood--Ayakatubby is part-Chickasaw, and Frohoff is part-Cherokee. The rest of the tour called them “The Young Lions.”

“We had a great summer that year,” Ayakatubby said. “All of a sudden, we had all this money we never had before, and we were just having a good time, on and off the beach.”

As the years went by, the pair began to take volleyball seriously. They made it a way of life. They won their first tournament in 1985 at Santa Cruz; a year later they won the second indoor championship of beach volleyball at the Calgary Saddledome.

But they split for good this year.

Ayakatubby and Frohoff beat Hovland and Dodd on April 29 to win at Ft. Worth, Tex. In other tournaments, they finished second twice, and fourth once.

But Frohoff moved on in late May, when former Olympian Karch Kiraly dumped his partner, Kent Steffes of Pacific Palisades.

Kiraly had experimented with Frohoff as a partner last season during Ayakatubby’s injury problems. Now Kiraly-Frohoff is one of the tour’s most formidable tandems, finishing no less than second in four events.

“Brent’s game has really grown by playing with Karch,” Ayakatubby said.

Although Ayakatubby holds no hope of playing with his old friend again, he isn’t holding grudges either.

“When Brent went with Karch, it was a pure business decision,” Ayakatubby said. “He had a chance to play with one of the best players in the world. I’d probably do the same thing. It happens. I just can’t dwell on it.”

Instead, Ayakatubby is toughing it out. He and Stevenson--the Assn. of Volleyball Professionals president--took seventh at Indianapolis last weekend, which brought Ayakatubby’s earnings this season to $31,000. He has made more than $130,000 in his career.

At times, he’s done it while battling heat exhaustion, which makes his legs lock up and shake uncontrollably.

“I walk around like I’m 90 years old,” he said.

Then of course there’s the stiff back, which constantly reminds Ayakatubby of the delicacy of his career.

The inherent demands of beach competition--twisting, turning, jumping, arching the back for spikes and diving into the sand for digs--takes a steady toll on the 6-foot-4 Ayakatubby.

“This game wrecks my body more than any other sport,” he said. “It’s kind of frustrating because this is how I make my living.”

He’s no longer a young lion. Nowadays, folks around the tour call him “Ak.” Ayakatubby has the beach in his blood--he started playing beach volleyball at 6, helped along by his mother and his uncle, Matt Gage.

Gage, the AVP’s tour director, was an active player during Ayakatubby’s boyhood and won 26 open tournaments “back when they played for a six-pack and a T-shirt,” Ayakatubby said.

Today, Ayakatubby is happy. He has finally reached a plateau where he can work out during the week, and he’s playing consistently again.

“I have to stay healthy so I can go all out, which I haven’t been able to do for two years,” he said. “I hated sitting out. That puts you into a bad mood all the time.”